What Does Job 20:10 Mean?
His children seek the favor of the emptied, and his hands return their wealth.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
His children shall seek to please the poor, and his hands shall restore their goods.THE KEY
The verse’s hidden reversal is that the hands holding wealth become the means by which it returns to the poor.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks now of wealth taken from the poor as unstable: what was theirs returns to them, and the hands that held it become the means of its return. Even the household’s next generation turns toward the poor to make amends.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that wealth gained at the poor’s expense can secure a household across generations collapses here: the children inherit the work of appeasing the poor, and the goods return.
THE ROOT
תָּשֵׁבְנָה
tashēvenah
GROWS FROM
שוב
turn back, return
The Hebrew verb makes return the center of the action: the hands cause what was away from the poor to come back. The verse presents repair as a reversal in direction, with wealth returning to those from whom it was withheld.
ALSO GROWS
yāshūv: he will return
יָשׁוּב
It uses the same root to name the movement back that the verse describes for the poor’s goods.
teshuvah: return, turning back
תְּשׁוּבָה
This noun carries the same root into the idea of a return, echoing the verse’s reversal of where the goods belong.
דַּלִּים
dallim
GROWS FROM
דלל
be low, hang down, become weak or impoverished
“poor” in this verse is dallim. The root pictures people reduced or brought low, not simply a category of wealth. The verse’s return is directed toward those whose condition has been diminished.
ALSO GROWS
dal: lowly, weak, poor
דָּל
This form names the person in the lowered condition that the verse places at the center of restoration.
dallut: poverty, low condition
דַּלּוּת
This noun names the state of reduction carried by the root, clarifying what the return to the poor addresses.
THE PATTERN
When the poor are deprived, the text turns toward restitution, returning what was taken and stripping deprivation of lasting profit.
Then it shall be, when he has missed the mark and is guilty, that he shall turn back what he tore away by force, or what he pressed, or what was placed in his hand to keep, or the thing that has lost its way, which he finds.For the LORD takes up their quarrel, and robs the living soul of those who rob them.And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, "Look, Lord, I give half of what I have to the emptied, and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I give back fourfold."THE THREAD
Then it shall be, when he has missed the mark and is guilty, that he shall turn back what he tore away by force, or what he pressed, or what was placed in his hand to keep, or the thing that has lost its way, which he finds.Both verses use forms of שוב (shuv), meaning to return: Job’s hands return the poor’s goods, while Leviticus names the return of what was seized or withheld. The shared root gives restitution a direction: what was carried away comes back.
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